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"Lapland Sorcerers" 225
Wyntlandya, pat ilond, is by west Denmark, and is a barayne
lond and of men mysbyleued; pei worschippeo mawmetrie, and
sellep wynd to schipmen, pat seillep to hire hauenes, as it were
i-closed vnder knottis of prede; and as pe knottes beep
vnknette, pe wynde wexep at her owne wil le.v"
In 1398 Trevisa finished a translation of a thirteenthcentury
compendium, the De Proprietatibus Rerum of
Bartholomaeus Anglicus. Book XV, chapter 172, "Of
Wynlandia", has a similar description:
Vvinlandia is a countre besydes the mountaynes of Norwaye
toward the easte, and stretcheth vppon the clyfe of occean:
. The men of that countrey ben strange and some what wylde
and tiers: and they occupien them selfe with wytchecrafte.
And so to men that saylle by their costes, and also to men that
abyde with theym/for defawte of wynde, they proffre wynde to
saylynge/and so they selle wynde, They vse to make a clewe
of threde, and they make dyuers knottes to be knytte therin.
And then they commaunde to drawe oute of the clewe vnto
three knottes or mo.or less/as they woll haue the wynde more
softe or strange. And for theyr mysbyleue fendes moue the
ayre and areyse stronge tempeste or softe, as he draweth of the
glewe more or lesse knottcs.P''
Trevisa's version of the Polychronicon was popular
throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was
printed by Caxton in a modernised text in 1482, and by
Wynkyn de Worde in 1495. Another edition followed in
1527, and the text was a source of quotations right
through the sixteenth century. The translation of
Bartholomaeus Anglicus's book was printed (with
omissions) by de Worde in 1495, in full in 1535, and again,
entitled Batman vppon Bartholome, his Booke De
Proprietatibus Rerum, with Stephen Bateman's comments
and additions in 1582. This last book Shakespeare is said
to have known. Yet all these have, instead of Lapland,
the name Wyn(t)landia, perhaps for Finlandia, possibly
influenced by ON Vindland and Vinland. There seems
no connection with the Lapps by name until the midsixteenth
century, when the works of a group of
"C. Babington, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis (1865­
86), I 323.
30 Bertholomevs de Proprietatibus Rervm (London, 1535), fa. ccxxviii r.